Safety

The Avatar Effect: Why Drivers Suck

What I call the Avatar effect plays a pervasive (if unconscious) role on the road. Basically, it comes down to moral hazard: people are more likely to take risks when they feel they are shielded from the consequences of their actions. Especially when they feel detached from danger via avatars or proxies. Like Jake Sully (the crippled main character of Avatar), who uses a super expensive Na’vi hu

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Learning to Drive: Double Standard

This is not true of the whole world, but the amount of ‘learning’ necessary to be allowed on the streets is dreadful. In the US, all that is necessary is test of common sense and a demonstrated aptitude of deciphering street signs. The only real learning necessary is how to appease the proctor in a 15 minute drive The driving test itself is about as close to a literal walk in the park as is possi

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Government Agencies' Scandal Incentive

Many automakers have decided to sell cars with massive defects (like steering wheel grenades), because in the end, they come out on top (see: GM ignitions switch scandal). However, it has been abundantly obvious for years; if left to the automakers; ubiquitous changes will not be implemented until it is absolutely necessary. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) was i

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Formula One Is Safer Than People Think

The cinematized versions of Niki Lauda and James Hunt effectively described the ubiquitous appeal of motorsport, in Ron Howard’s Rush. It is a rather embarrassingly barbaric allure, but unfortunately, it is one we; as a society; have not, and likely will never outgrow. People just love how close motorsport gets to death. The propensity they have of dying is often exaggerated In the movie, Lauda c

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The Problem With Our Infrastructure

Eventually, another Dwight D Eisenhower like federal push will be necessary to modernize our ailing automotive infrastructure. Otherwise, the horrendous service we have today will keep us in a perpetual state of just below outrage. The problem, this time around, will be aesthetics. In 1956, the Federal-Aid Act yielded essentially immediate ostensible results; you could see workers actually making

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Governmentally Mandated Safety

Automotive safety and government usually go hand in hand, because if it were up to automakers, there would be no general standard. If it were not for governmental mandates, I guarantee that inherent automotive safety would not be where it is now. However, that is not to say that it would be entirely absent, the average would just be much lower. The problem with laissez-faire economics, is that it

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Autonomous Auto Anatomy: Nervous System

While we think the idea of an autonomous auto as a relatively new one, it has been gestating for over four decades. The anatomy of an autonomous auto has been developing since the introduction of an Anti-lock braking system (ABS). While it is normally thought of as an automotive process, the first vehicle to have an antilock braking technology was actually a plane in 1929. Anti-lock brakes work b

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The Art of Stopping

When most people think about autonomous autos, the center of focus is usually the steering not nraking. But being able to let the car coast along at a predetermined speed with hands off the wheel. But it can be argued that braking is more important in the autonomy formula. The technology for automatic braking has been around for 45 years now. The Anti-lock Braking Systems (ABS) was introduced by

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Automotive Legislation Lag

It is a well documented fact that legislation lags behind automotive technology more often than not. There are many vehicular safety improvements floating around only in the imaginations of engineers. However, because legislators live many years in the past, they have not been able to be implemented. Those on the side of Libertarian values would argue, that it is no place of the (already too large

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Security Expert Exposes How Easy it is to Hack a Nissan Leaf

Troy Hunt is MVP (which, in this case, stands for Most Valuable Professional) for Developer Security at Microsoft, which makes him a trusted authority on the subject of vehicle hacking. So when Hunt uncovered a security loophole that allowed him to control a Nissan Leaf that wasn’t his own via a vulnerable API, people are going to take notice (particularly people like us who write about the automo

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